LOUISE O'NE ILL: Unlike today, my sister
and I were allowed to become bored
It was my Granny Murphy’s birthday recently. She probably wouldn’t be too
pleased with me if I revealed her exact age in De Paper but let’s just say that it
was a considerable milestone, one that many of us would be delighted to reach,
writes Louise O’Neill.
Most of the Murphy clan descended on Fernhill House hotel for an incredible
afternoon tea, where Granny was presented with an extensive array of food
designed to meet her dietary requirements as she is currently caffeine and gluten
free which, let’s face it, is peak 2018. She was in wonderful form, still in very good
health, and she continues to be the linchpin of our entire family; the matriarch to
whom we all gravitate.
As a good Catholic woman, she wouldn’t like to admit to being too proud of any
of her children or grandchildren (blasphemy!), but she did buy multiple copies of
Almost Love for her day care centre, prompting my desperate pleas to my mother
that I be allowed to rip out all the sex scenes contained within, and was almost
beside herself with glee when I appeared on The Late Late Show, that pinnacle of
achievement for any Irish person.
Looking at her on her birthday, surrounded by her loved ones, I was struck by how
she seems to represent both my future — the inevitability of genes and nature, of
how my own face might look as time marches on — but also my past. My sister
and I spent a great deal of time on my grandparents’ farm as children, pretty much
every weekend and what seemed like most of our summer holidays.
I wasn’t a particularly ‘country’ girl, taking such pride in my brand new yellow
overalls and matching wellies that I refused to go outside in them lest they get
dirty. But still, I loved it there and I cherish my childhood memories. Open fields
and doe-eyed cows, the smell of lamb chops and overcooked vegetables, the soupy
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